Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez at a news conference in Madrid on Friday. “The decision is in the Spanish people’s hands,” he said, announcing elections in April
A center-left government has fallen. The two-party system has collapsed. The far-right is on the rise. At first glance, Spain seems a lot like other parts of Europe these days. And it is.
But the decision on Friday by Spain’s Socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, to call for an early general election in April — the country’s third since late 2015 — is also an echo of deeper, particularly Spanish dynamics at play.
A secessionist drive in the prosperous northern region of Catalonia has challenged both the country’s territorial integrity and the core arrangements of the 1978 Constitution for Spain, one of Western Europe’s youngest democracies. The result is the rise of a new nationalism across Spain, which in many ways has yet to fully reconcile the divisions left by the darkest chapters of its recent past, including dictatorship and civil war. Advertisement Spain’s most volatile fault lines lay just beneath the political surface, turning what might otherwise be just another election into a reminder of unfinished business and the potentially wrenching tasks still ahead. Catalonia is first among them. All roads in Spanish politics seem to lead there. The collapse of Mr. Sánchez’s Socialist government, the rise of a new far-right party called Vox, and the struggles of the center-right Popular Party are partly a function of the Catalan push for an independent state. You have 2 free articles remaining. Subscribe to The Times But even if some of the roots of its current instability are unique, Spain has also proved hardly immune to the spread of populism and nationalism sweeping much of Europe.
“What we have in common with the rest of European countries is polarization,” said José Ignacio Torreblanca, the head of the Madrid office of the European Council for Foreign Relations, a political research group. “What is specific about Spain,” Mr. Torreblanca said, “is the Catalan issue.” Mr. Sánchez’s decision on Friday to call for a snap election on April 28 came two days after his minority Socialist government suffered a major defeat in Parliament, when Catalan lawmakers voted with his right-wing opposition to reject his budget plan. Editors’ Picks He Committed Murder. Then He Graduated From an Elite Law School. Would You Hire Him as Your Attorney? Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two In 12 Minutes, Everything Went Wrong Advertisement That effectively neutered a government that was all but impotent in any case; Mr. Sánchez’s Socialist party held less than a quarter of the seats in Parliament. The frail minority required Mr. Sánchez to seek the support of small regional parties — including Catalan nationalists. They proved useful in helping him unseat his center-right predecessor,
Mariano Rajoy, last June, and to pass some legislation. But the Catalans also continued to hold the stability of the government — and the country — hostage to their grievances that Spain siphons off their wealth and that their region’s unique language and culture entitle it to separate. The Catalans abandoned Mr. Sánchez once it became clear he was only interested in piecemeal concessions to Catalonia, instead of allowing them a referendum on secession. The timing of the budget vote on Wednesday did not help, coming as it did just a day after the start of a landmark trial of 12 former Catalan leaders on charges of sedition and rebellion before the Supreme Court in Madrid. The crisis this week was the latest chapter of a Catalan story that hit a crescendo in October 2017, when separatist leaders organized an independence referendum that was declared unconstitutional by Spanish courts. Sign up for The Interpreter Subscribe for original insights, commentary and discussions on the major news stories of the week, from columnists Max Fisher and Amanda Taub.
Spain’s Constitution, written three years after the death of the former dictator, Gen. Francisco Franco, already gives considerable autonomy to Catalonia. A pro-independence demonstration in Barcelona on Tuesday.CreditEmilio Morenatti/Associated Press Image A pro-independence demonstration in Barcelona on Tuesday.CreditEmilio Morenatti/Associated Press But it is not enough to placate hard-liners, who wanted Catalans to vote on whether to secede entirely. Such a vote has little support among Spaniards in most of the rest of the country. The impasse reflects how Spain’s relatively young democracy has yet to conclusively address several constitutional issues that, in the eyes of some Spaniards, were never entirely resolved after Franco’s death, said Oriol Bartomeus, a politics professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. “Now a new generation, who do not have an emotional attachment to that agreement, or were just children at that time, are raising their hands and saying that the agreement was not good,”
Mr. Bartomeus said. “And there is an attempt to rethink it from the left — and a reaction to that from the right.” Catalonia’s unsanctioned referendum provoked Mr. Rajoy, the prime minister at the time, to suspend the Catalan regional parliament. He imposed direct rule from Madrid — deepening Catalan grievances, while also reawakening a long-dormant Spanish nationalism. The result is a far more polarized political environment that is likely to influence the April national election. In regional elections in December, the far-right Vox party emerged holding the balance of power in the parliament of the southern region of Andalusia. Vox’s support was partly fueled by rising illegal migration, but also by anger over Catalonia, Mr. Torreblanca said. Advertisement “Vox is a party that is typically anti-immigration, but it’s not immigration that is putting wind in their sails,” said Mr. Torreblanca.
“What has pushed Vox is the feeling that Rajoy was not hard enough on the Catalan issue.” In a speech on Friday, Mr. Sánchez highlighted the virtues of his social policies, which include raising the minimum wage by more than a fifth, and introducing plans to raise pension payments — but it may not be enough to return him to office. If the national election follows contours similar to the Andalusian poll, Mr. Sánchez’s Socialists may emerge as the largest party in Parliament, but remain outnumbered by the conservative Popular Party, the center-right Ciudadanos and Vox. That would mean one less center-left leader at the table of European politics, at a time when Social Democratic governments are already increasingly rare. The trial of the 12 separatist Catalan leaders is likely to keep the Catalan issue front and center of the campaign. And it will be “something that is going to push right-wing parties,” said Ignacio Molina, a senior analyst at the Elcano Royal Institute, a Madrid-based research group. But unlike in Italy, where far-right euroskeptics help run a populist coalition government, whatever coalition emerges in Spain is likely to be pro-Europe. The Popular Party, Ciudadanos and the Socialists are all broadly in favor of European integration. Advertisement The danger instead is that a weak and distracted Spanish government, however willing to engage constructively in European affairs, may find itself consumed by domestic disputes.
With Italy and Poland now ruled by euroskeptics, and Britain set to leave the bloc altogether, “you need a big country in the south, like Spain, to help decide the future of European integration,” Mr. Molina said. “But that’s going to be much more difficult unless you have a new government that is strong.” As Spain’s economy improved and its unemployment levels fell, the country had been expected to emerge from years of economic crisis and political introspection to become a key player in the reforms of the European currency and European Union migration policy. “But if you have a weak government,” Mr. Molina said, “it’s much more difficult for Spain to shape decisions or implement them.”
No comments: